


Stylized Interlude

by comete



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Explicit Language, Handsome Jack talks to his former self, Handsome Jack/himself, Hyperion CEO Handsome Jack (Borderlands), Jack's brain is broke and the only fix is bringing back Golden Girls, King of the (empty) castle, M for cursing, MPD, Not in that way!, Now back to ur regularly scheduled tags:, Repression, They are mentally ill, Trauma, Trauma content baybey!!!, Who put my trauma on main?, and this doesnt have a plot, did, though it has FEELINGS!, which is John AKA Jack from TPS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 09:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comete/pseuds/comete
Summary: Jack has a conversation with himself.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Stylized Interlude

_You’re wearing my clothes._

… Correct. Jack was wearing his clothes. He was wearing their clothes and that is a very obvious statement to make. Bingo! Jackpot! Yahtzee! Right on the nose, big guy! Your prize? Being ignored. Though Jack should’ve known, being snubbed wasn’t going to fly. It was only a matter of ten seconds before the voice persisted without aim.

_I would’ve thought by now you would’ve shelled out every dollar in the system for some new threads since we’re, y’know, gazillionaires now. Maybe even had some patterns made with Harold’s face on ‘em to gloat about your ‘promotion.’ So what gives? What’s the holdup?_

“Work,” Jack muttered in response while he stared at two duel monitors in front of him. Each flashed different walls of texts and picture-in-picture popup windows of varying contexts. Some pictured windows were devoted to previously documented data reports involving the major department branches that the CEO checked in with from time-to-time. Another window was a catalog of every employee in the system, even down to the poor bastard who was in the excruciating lower rung of Assistant-Vice-Janitor. Another window was a grinning topless blonde woman with too much air in her head and not enough Jack in her 

What? She was a little piece of eye candy to keep Jack entertained while he chipped away at the job of… everything. He did _everything_ now that he was CEO.

_Yeah? That’s it then? Work? All the time? Being in charge of 'everything' with no fun? C’mooooon! You made it, kiddo! Why're you starin’ at some hooker on a screen when you’re rich enough for the real thing, eh? Seriously, reverse image search her! Dial 'er up. Offer her cash. Get laid. Possibly get a disease, too, but whatever! That’s the high life, right?_

Ignoring! Shut up.

Jack progressed typing away in a drafted email to all major leaders of branches upon smaller branches upon twig branches of his company. The man felt as if all he did now was write emails to people who pissed their pants when ' _HANDSOME GODDAMN JACK'_ appeared in their inbox. The only difference between email writing now from back then was that his emails weren't instantly sent to spam. Now his emails were copied, pasted, printed, signed, sealed, and delivered to every soul in the branch proceeding each subordinate of said branch. Jack wondered how many emails he would've received if Tassiter had been as diligent as being CEO as Jack was. Speaking of, how long had it been since they took over? What? A month? More? Not too long, but long enough. Just long enough.

_Exactly! 'Long enough!' I thought that you were gonna celebrate once you made it to the top? So what happened? You went from crazed Vault Key’d man on Elpis to lookin’ like you’re still tryin’ to climb the ladder up, up, up. We made it, Jack! Why not live a little? Christ, at least take a break once in a while. Even I didn't work this hard, shit._

Shaking their head, Jack felt a sigh ghost past his plastic sealed lips before he could process their actions. Jack was being moved, unwillingly, back further into his chair with his feet kicking the rolling seat away from the desk towards Elpis. “John,” Jack warned seriously as his body was repositioned to sink into the imported Hyperion yellow cushion. He wasn't positive what John was doing, but in any scenario, Jack was being pulled from his urgent work.

_Relax! I’m not gonna vent you out of a friggin’ airlock, sheesh. I just wanna take a break, ‘kay? You- we’ve been starin’ at the same code for an hour. Bleehh. I’m getting motion sickness with each breath we take 'cause of it, so let’s take a minute 'fore you go divin’ back in, alright? One sec? Yeah? Cool. Peachy. Now chill the eff out._

Jack wasn’t certain if it was the tone in which John cooed within his mind or the heavy stress on his shoulders that made themselves apparent and begged for relief, but Jack didn’t protest too heavily when he was enfolded into the chair. Jack’s broad hands were moved to rest on either side of the armchair, head tilted back, eyes shut without any further argument. “One sec,” he echoed back to John with a voice of truce.   
Just one second.

Within the confines of that single second, Jack allowed his thoughts to wander away from work. He took in the hum of Helios and referred back to the conclusion he'd made the first time he'd ever traveled into the galaxy.

Space sounded strange. As in, the literal audio that surrounded the vacuumed abyss outside of Helios. Utter silence that ranged forever without a foreseen ending. On Tantalus-

_You weren’t on Tantalus. I was._

Jack snorted a small inhale of a chuckle when he was cut off.   
Okay, yeah, true. _Jack_ wasn’t on Tantalus, no. John was.   
Why don’t you go ahead, then, since you already know what I'm gonna say?

_Heh. Gladly. On Tantalus, there was barely a moment of silence. Sorta similar to Pandora, though not nearly as much of a trash-heap armpit shithole disgusting rancid worthless fucking wh-_

“John?”

_Yeah, yeah. I know. We’re workin’ on a plan for them, aren’t we? Yeah. Okay. Deep breath exercise. Yup. Tantalus. Right. So. Even during the quiet parts at night, it wasn’t dead silent like space is. I’m not sure what I expected, actually. When I read and studied space in school, I always thought that it was, I dunno, more soulful? It never occurred to me what true silence was, I guess since I never really experienced it myself. We certainly didn’t experience it at grandma’s, huh?_

Jack shook his head with his heterochromatic eyes remaining shut. No, they did not experience silence there. Nope. Not even for a stolen second.

Helios buzzed quietly and consistently. Low purs of the space station that remained anchored in place with mansion-sized engines and even bigger wings that extended into the complicated “H” that Pandora knew and hated. The noise of Helios wasn’t annoying, though. Far from, in reality. The hum was comforting and inviting, the soft mewl of power that never paused to take a breath even in the most strenuous of moments.

_Like you?_

“Like me,” Jack said with a smirk on his lips. Like him, if he hadn’t been forced by John to take a moment of relaxation. Working side-by-side with Helios, Jack and the space station were a match made in heaven. 

Jack and Helios. John and Elpis.   
Two men with hearts intertwined with cold twinned women that murmured back to their lovers. Continuously mumbling their sweet affection in return, however, just because the women spoke didn't imply that the husbands always heard their lustrous symphony of voice.

Thoughts died out into tranquil silence amongst the men that shared one cogged mind. Neither of them had anything to debate, nor exclaim, with their time spent within the seconds as a well-deserved break that both of them needed. Jack especially had been desperate for a period of meditation without recognizing the severity of his building stress. Who knew owning the biggest company in the universe could be work? Huh. 

This job is what they had both worked towards, though. There was no way they would ever throw in the towel, even if the stress was a moment away from killing them. 

John endured their early years and climbed the corporate ladder one coworker-face-rung at a time. Jack? He was the push they needed to make it to the crown when they were born on Elpis, fashioning a new personality and an even newer scar. Jack wondered which was more significant in personality. Scar? Him? They both held tremendous weight.

_… Really? You think? Wait. Backup a sec. I thought you were born early on? Not on Elpis, but back when things got really bad for us, y’know? When we were dumped with grandma?_

“Possibly,” Jack answered aloud into the empty space of his office that oversaw his moon. “No way of knowin'. I think… I think where we separate is like one of those stupid infinity loops that white twenty-year-old girls get on their ankles. We’ve been connected for so long-”

 _-that we’re like one being. Where you start-  
_ “-and I begin is a philosophical question that would-”  
  
 _”-keep those eggheads up at night.”  
_ They spoke simultaneously.

John crossed his arms through Jack’s body _(his body?)_ as he pondered the interpretation of their personalities conjoined within one entity. They both served a purpose, though it wasn't always clean-cut of what that reasoning was. John thought Jack had been born of trauma to shield him away from the worst of it all, though that didn't quite add up. Neither of them could pinpoint details of a bad experience, so why was Jack there clear back then? Was he really born on Elpis? No, couldn't be. Jack had taken control of their body once or twice out of protection when they were underage. 

_Right?_

John’s memories were fuzzy when thinking back to particularly dreadful moments in their childhood. He could make out the shape and major plot points of those days, but nothing too specific and certainly not the trauma itself. Jack was in the same boat. However, he remembered greater details of those days than John could. None of which were ever significant in any way, but Jack was able to recall the feel of fabric or the color of a piece of apparel around him. Funny stuff. Shit that didn't matter. A crumb of a horrid memory that was secluded and shrink-wrapped neatly into a moment that neither of them could think of even if their lives depended on it.

_I sometimes wonder if all of that shit really happened, then, if neither of us can remember it, but I know it did. If it weren’t for the scars and the way our bones healed, I bet we both would’ve pretended like it was a bad dream. 'Repressed it' or whatever the stupid medical term is._

Jack nor John was sure who was nodding. Both, maybe. They agreed with the words. It was easier that way, wasn’t it? To imagine that the life they lived earlier was nothing more than a child’s nightmare that prolonged in their memory decades after the initial bad dream. It was simpler that way in the moment, but knowingly not good for their mental healing in the long-run. What were their options, though, then? Huh? 

John had been too busy in his trail upwards to the tip-top of Hyperion to talk to some overpriced shrink about his baby booboos as a boy. Also? Handsome Jack going to a psychiatrist? _No-fucking-way._ There wasn’t a single person either of them would be able to trust with such confidential information about the most powerful man alive. The tabloids would have a goddamn _field day_ if it got out that Jack had some metaphorical skeletons in his closet instead of the physical ones that he had. No. Therapy and medication weren’t an option. Too risky. Too easy to be nerfed by some fake practitioner looking for a comfy spot with the view of Elpis behind them. 

One of them sighed out loud. One of them lifted their left hand to their face, brushing over the lower jaw of the cold plastic mask that hid the growing stubble beneath. 

They knew that they were declining. The stress of being CEO was expected, but not prepared. Who could be ready for the greatest job there ever was? Without being in the hot seat, there is no way to prep. Just the minuscule work of taking out the boss above and getting some new hair gel to signify that, why yes, _I am someone important._ Thanks for noticing! Now lick my boots.

Their life had become details on top of details as they struggled to work through the mess that Tassiter had left behind when he was uh, _put to rest._ Harold had been running the company off of budget cuts and expendable property of life whiiiiiich in itself isn’t a horrible thing, but the image of said company as well as representation for who owns it is critical, too. 

Jack had eagerly made his debut the moment he got government of the switchboard and all the appropriate sub-important people below him. Photoshoots, magazine covers, more body-doubles to star in every porn category imaginable _(straight, gay, bi, tentacle shit- you name it!)_ \- all for the sake of rebranding Hyperion as a man rather than a faceless corporate machine. No more silent Tassiter. 

It was Jack’s time, now. No, scratch that. _Their_ time. Can't forget the little guys, right? (That was a joke, John, by the way.) 

Without John, Jack would be nowhere. He was man enough to realize that. It was both of them in the body of one particularly handsome bastard with the entire galaxy at their fingertips.   
Their time!

_Well, shit! That’s my boy! Wooo! Fuck yeah! Cheers! Drinks all around! Uh-huh! Exactly! So why the HELL are you still wearing my clothes, Jack?_

Jack peeked down to the somewhat worn Hyperion yellow sweater and _eh-_ quality faded long gray dress pants below, scuffed brown moon-boots to mismatch with the ensemble. Why? Why was the biggest God known to man in such a weakened outfit when he was on magazines photoshopped to be ripped with a million abs and the latest clothes? Why was Jack sporting such lower classed attire instead of something made of diamonds and gold and Eridium thread? Why? Why?

_Yeah. Why?_

“Seriously? 'Cause I’m comfy.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @cowboy_cohen  
> tumblr: video-space
> 
> hey thank's for reading! I'm not sure what the hell this is but I wanted to write suddenly and thought that I would finally sit down and jam out some words. I have DID (doctor diagnosed, unfortunately) and have been through a long, long, long period of therapy specialized for it. I wanted to write something that reflected old convos of back-and-forth that I used to have with (myself) and express it in a way that is Jack/John!
> 
> john kin projection go brr brrr hum hum woo woo
> 
> If you had a dandy time, please leave a kudos and a comment!! This is my first-time publishing something in the borderlands tag on archive, so I hope you liked it!


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